The notion of vraisemblance, “in whose name all the literary battles were fought, is at the root of all criticism” (Bray 1931, 192; c'est en son nom que se livrent toutes les batailles littéraires, elle est à la base de toutes les critiques). Derived from Aristotle's probable, in the rediscovery of the Poetics in Renaissance Italy, vraisemblance takes the key hierarchical position in seventeenth-century neoclassicism and maintains it until well into the eighteenth century.

The book gets behind the money, the mechanic picks up the crap stick and starts boxing up the dice.

It would have been so easy for him to have the kids rolling on the floor, doubled up with laughter. So he had to put the brakes on at times.

But she quickly countered that impression with the warm, almost mezzolike sound she brought to Peter Kelsh’s appealing, neo-Romantic “When Shall We Set Sail for Happiness?”